Sorry, I couldn't understand what you said, so I'm just going to move this thread over to San Guo Yan Yi Symposium Archives. For future reference though, this is the thread to post nominations for those threads that you feel deserve to be archived: http://the-scholars.com/viewtopic.php?t=2833. Thanks to all the contributors for sharing their knowledge and hard work with us.

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
- Albert Einstein

Cherry_Blossom wrote:I think Lu Kang would say the ones not translated or all of them..since they aren't translated I don't believe either of us can make sense of em. For myself I vote do whatever you can. Your the one going out of your way to help me out so anything is fine with me!

Actually it would mean army, not really soldiers. Soldiers/troops is 兵 or 卒.

Lady Wu wrote:A question, Jiang Zhi: Is you ranking list of the Wei ranking or the Jin ranking?

Those are mainly the Wei heirachy and rankings. I checked out the site Jiang Zhi supplied and the person p2001 said it was the Wei structure.

Jiang Zhi wrote:o.O what's this mainly? Another set of CoC?

That is the structure which shows some of the more important rankings of the officers. It is basically showing how some of the offices were under whom and such. It started off with the top class and worked its way down.

E.g. Under the top class Commander in Chief (da si ma), he had the following officers under his command: jun shi, chang shi, si ma, can jun, zhu bu and lie cao yuan shu.

At the very bottom that person who posted all of this was listing his sources of references. They were as follows:

Those are mainly the Wei heirachy and rankings. I checked out the site Jiang Zhi supplied and the person p2001 said it was the Wei structure.

This may be a stupid question but uh what is the difference between the Wei and Jin rankings? And if it is Wei then do the same ranks apply to officers in other kingdoms?

That is the structure which shows some of the more important rankings of the officers. It is basically showing how some of the offices were under whom and such. It started off with the top class and worked its way down.

E.g. Under the top class Commander in Chief (da si ma), he had the following officers under his command: jun shi, chang shi, si ma, can jun, zhu bu and lie cao yuan shu.

Another question..since I cannot read this to save my life does it happen to cover who would be under the commanding officer? Like where say the officer in charge of cavalry would fit? See I just want to elaborate more on what I had asked and Greet Deer (one of our many gurus of The Three Kingdoms was helping to answer.) : [quote] Yep. It's possible. Historically, while serving under Lu Bu, Zhang Liao was holding the appointment of ??? or the officer in charge of the cavalry. Gao Shun on the other hand was holding the appointment of ?? which is equivalent to the commanding officer. [/quote

Thank-you!! I never realized there were so many ranks!! (dubs Jiuwan another guru of the Three Kingdoms..and someone who must need sleep for all the work.. )

Short version of a quote by Thales:
Of all things;God = most ancient;he is uncreated,Universe=most beautiful;God's work,Space=greatest;holds all,Swiftest=mind;speeds
everywhere,Strongest=necessity;masters all,Wisest=time; brings all things to light

Cherry_Blossom wrote:This may be a stupid question but uh what is the difference between the Wei and Jin rankings? And if it is Wei then do the same ranks apply to officers in other kingdoms?

There is a difference. Now I don't know much about the Jin ranks, so I won't elaborate too much on it.

Wei rankings are different from Shu-Han's, Wu's, and even Han's. Now some of the rankings you will see over and over again. But some of the more obscure rankings you will not be familar with.

The reason being, as the reigns change, different emperors will appoint their generals differently. A lot of the rankings you see in the 3 kingdoms period were made up by their respective rulers and were very different from the Later Han rankings.

One example is the Prime Minster rank (cheng xiang). Under the Han court, the Three Dukes held the highest powers underneath the emperor. But in 208AD the post of the Three Dukes were abolished and the Prime MInister rank along with the Imperial Ckerk Grandee were restored. And Cao Cao was the one who became Prime Minster.

Now let's look at the Colonel position. Originally under the Han courts, there were eight big Colonel positions, they were divided into: Colonel of the Garrison Army, Colonel of the Footsoldiers, Colonel of the Elite Cavalry, Colonel of the Chang River Regiment, Colonel of the Wild Cavalry, Colonel of the Archers who Shoots a Sound, Colonel of the Energetic Tigers, and Colonel of the Palace Walls. These Colonel were amongs the highest ranking officers. Afterwards, these eight became five: the Wild Cavalry was merged into teh Chang River Regiment, the Engergetic Tigers merged with the Archers who Shoot at a Sound, and the Palace Walls became Captain of the Center of the Northern Army. Although there were five remaining they were prestigious ranks.

Near the end of the Eastern Han dynasty, they losted their importance in the ranks. During the 3 Kingdoms period, Shu, Wei and Wu kept the post of these ranks, but the importance had went from high to low. These ranks now barely had over a thousand soldiers under their command.

So different ranks held different meanings during different reigns under different rulers. Some ranks can carry over to different kingdoms, but may carry varying importance.

E.g. Under Shu the rank of General in Chief who Supports the State (fu guo da jiang jun) is ranked just below General of the Guards. Under Wei the same rank is below General of the Guards, General in Chief of the Grand Army, and General in Chief of the Central Army. Now in Wu, I don't see that same rank (I could be wrong) as high as Shu's and Wei's. In Wu the high rank of General who Supports the state (fu guo jiang jun) is almost the equivalent of Shu and Wei's General in Chief who Supports the State.

Another example is the General of the Rear (hou jiang jun). While in Wu and Shu there are about in the middle of the elite list, it is at the bottom of the elite list in Wei.

Yet another example is the rank of General who Supports the Han (fu han jiang jun). While it is in the Shu ranks, I don't see it in the Wei nor Wu ranking systems. Gee I wonder why? Note: Jiang Wei held this rank before.

Hope my examples can answer your questions. I couldn't really answer your first one directly so I used Han ranks instead, but I think you get the point.

Cherry_Blossom wrote:Another question..since I cannot read this to save my life does it happen to cover who would be under the commanding officer? Like where say the officer in charge of cavalry would fit?

Well I got lazy and didn't feel like translating the whole thing. But the one example that I did do covered the basics. All the higher ranks - da si ma, da jiang jun, da du du all had the basic underlings if you will. Da du du and biao ji da jiang jun had the extra cong shi zhong lang underneath them.

While inside the capital there were certain set of ranks, outside the capital there were other ranks too.

Say for example a commandery is governed by a tai shou, underneath him he would have a civil assistant helping him (cheng) and a commandant (wei). Now this commandant is a jun wei, which is different from someone like xiao wei (colonel) or bu bing xiao wei (commandant of the footsoldiers). The ranks are different. Strecthing it would be like saying a da si ma is different from a si ma. Now the chinese characters is the same for both ranks, except for the "da" in da si ma. A regular si ma is just a lowly major in ranks, while the da si ma is the commander in chief.

Lastly, a lot of those ranks listed are the ranks over the time of Later Han right up to Jin, I believe. So some of the ranks you will recognize because they are the same names throughout the ages, but vary in importance depending on reign of the emperor.

When I get more time, I'll elaborate on some of the ranks more, I'll have to dig deeper into HHS and Rafe's works to get the info.

Cherry_Blossom wrote:I never realized there were so many ranks!!

Neither did I when I set out to translate them But to be honest, I kinda got lazy so I kinda skipped a whole bunch. I saw in HHS a few scrolls dedicated to the ranks and I didn't even to skim through it all yet, so no telling how much ranks I missed. But I'm willing to bet I missed quite a lot.

jiuwan wrote:One example is the Prime Minster rank (cheng xiang). Under the Han court, the Three Dukes held the highest powers underneath the emperor. But in 208AD the post of the Three Dukes were abolished and the Prime MInister rank along with the Imperial Ckerk Grandee were restored. And Cao Cao was the one who became Prime Minster.

I think you need to differentiate the Three Dukes during Xi Han era and Dong Han era. Ya, Three Dukes maybe the highest powers during Xi Han era but when come to Dong Han era, their power shifted to Shang Shu Ling.

Mengdez New Book wrote:I think you need to differentiate the Three Dukes during Xi Han era and Dong Han era. Ya, Three Dukes maybe the highest powers during Xi Han era but when come to Dong Han era, their power shifted to Shang Shu Ling.